Here's today's graded paper (50/50) from my Religious Studies REL 100 course request for my Sociology degree from Simmons. It's impetus you can see on YouTube: "Black Church Studies" video "The Origins of the Black Church in America" by Marshall Hatch. We did this in-person today to my enjoyment, and I hope grad school is a lot more like that. Dig:
This week was devoted to the Black Church in America halfway. Our first group was the death penalty component of Christian Ethics I quite enjoyed. Honestly this topic I have had my fill of. Inside three years I am very thankful for, this is 3 or 4 times I have studied the Black Church. Reviewing my life, I went 30 years ago and listened to Coretta Scott King speak at the University of Kentucky. That was exciting and enlightening, in a time of vast change.
Since then, I have seen my country grasp onto narratives I find unhealthy and sometimes disturbing. Especially when they are regressive and counterproductive yet considered progressive and focused on positive change. Mindsets stuck in the 1990s bother me like those then that clung to the 1970s when casual racism erupted around me daily. During the 1990s, Afrocentrism rose to vogue responding to remaining issues, and fixated on victim-hood. Watching Black success flourish without the crutches those ideologues represented has been reaffirming.
Since 2020 especially, the time of George Floyd with seeds before, that mentality has spread dangerously. Whats refreshing is how much I am getting to see young Black men who do not buy into it. Notions that slavery in any way impacts their mistakes, misery, or mindset. Engaging discussions, they've heard my take.
Seeing as I have in the literature that Providence is the feature of God universal to the African and African-American faiths, I would agree. Slavery is providential, giving me my cousins, my college, my cuisine, and enriching my country culturally. Hearing Marshall Hatch miseducate on the "Origins of the Black Church" video claiming the slaves were "kidnapped" subtracting culpability of Africa in the trade we know to be historically accurate is disappointing. This man who clearly eats and lives well spreads bitterness needlessly, and if he carries the love for God he claims would he not be thankful for God's providence? That especially upsets me with the inmate community present. These people are trying to take responsibility for themselves. Spreading a mindset of inculpability is unsound to reforming criminals. They need messages of hope with Black success in the modern ethos where standards of excellence are rule and not exception.
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